We’re all human beings. Correct? Yeah? So, it doesn’t matter if you’re a - if you’re a guy who likes girls, or a guy who likes guys, or a guy who likes girls and guys, or a girl who likes guys and girls. Or a girl who wants to be a guy, or a guy who dresses like girls, or a transvestite lesbian standup comedian. Or a Transylvanian vampire lizard - no, wait. Yeah, no, okay. So dead old human beings, you can do what you like to them. But all those other categories I mentioned: human beings, right? We’re all people. Which means that we deserve each other’s respect.

Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

Fan fiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped in a sealed bunker. They don’t do it for money. That’s not what it’s about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction. They’re fans, but they’re not silent, couchbound consumers of media. The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.